Unverified footage purports to show the aftermath of a government air strike on a Damascus petrol station. A badly wounded man is seen emerging from the rubble with the help of two others. At least 30 civilians were killed in the attack in the rebel-controlled suburb of Muleiha, opposition campaigners say

Death toll study

The decision by UN officials to assign a death toll for a given conflict can be highly controversial, and invariably provokes challenges by governments and sometimes other UN officials. In 2009, [the human rights chief Navi] Pillay encountered intense pushback from top UN officials before publishing an account of the number of civilians who were slaughtered during the final months of Sri Lanka's civil war.

This time around, Pillay's deputy, Ivan Simonovic, faced little opposition when he informed the UN secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, and other top UN officials before Christmas that Pillay's figure was going to be high – though he didn't cite a number. One UN official said the figure turned out to be significantly higher than most of Ban's aides had anticipated.

Rupert Colville, Pillay's spokesman, told Turtle Bay that while this was the first time that the high commissioner had commissioned Benetech to estimate a conflict death toll, she had previously offered guesstimates of death tolls in Egypt and Tunisia.

Pillay released a Syrian death toll estimate in 2011, but resisted subsequent pressure to release an update because of uncertainty about the numbers. She was persuaded by Benetech's analysis, according to Colville.

Colville acknowledged that there "is a bit of a risk" in basing the high commissioner's estimate on raw data collected by independent groups. "It's not a perfect number," he said. "But given the level of research that went into this, it's far better than what we had before."

Syrian opposition activists are frequently accused of exaggerating the death toll figures, but Atlantic argues that one of the main reasons why the 60,000 figure is likely to be an underestimate is its reliance on opposition figures.

A large share of the report's data come from organisations with some kind of formal connection to the Syrian opposition. Benetech only counted victims for whom they had a name, date and place of death, and the vast majority of deaths are confirmed through multiple sources. But opposition groups could be under-counting deaths in areas they can't access … The opposition might not have accurate data on the number of government forces killed over the course of the war, and they might even have incentives to deliberately under-count combatant casualties on both sides.

8.44am GMT

Assad to hang on till 2014

Bashar al-Assad is likely to stay in power until 2014, according to Syrian watcher Joshua Landis, director of the Centre for Middle East Studies at the University of Oklahoma.

Asked to clarify remarks he made on Twitter earlier today about Assad's prospects, Landis replied: "Who is going to defeat him?"

He told the Guardian that rebels remained divided, underfunded and poorly equipped. He said:

Ethnic and sectarian divisions make victory difficult. Poverty hurts the regime, but also it hurts rebels, who are scavenging and beginning to cannibalise each other.

The Syrian army, by contrast, remains cohesive, fully armed and with a clear command-and-control structure, Landis pointed out. It has also changed tactics to focus on protecting Damascus and the survival of the regime, Landis claimed.

It has learned it cannot control everything and has fallen back. The south and Damascus is much more difficult terrain for rebels than the north and Aleppo.

Aleppo has been harder to defend because of its proximity to Turkey, which offers rebels protection and short lines of retreat. "In the south [neighbouring countries] Lebanon, Israel, Iraq and Jordan are all hostile to rebels and do not allow them refuge, comfort and resupply," Landis said.

Landis also pointed out that the international community remains divided over how to tackle the crisis. The US is concerned about supporting al-Qaida-linked groups such as Jabhat al-Nusra, which is leading the fight against the Syrian government in many areas and which the US has proscribed as a terrorist organisation.

"The US has few interests in Syria and every incentive to stay out," Landis said.

And the main regional opponents of the Assad government – Turkey, Qatar and Saudi Arabia – lack a co-ordinated approach and have not always worked in concert.

Al-Rashed Predicts Assad of #Syria fall by March 2013. This is unlikely. #Assad will probably hang on until 2014. bit.ly/Uaxb45

War tourist

Toshifumi Fujimoto's passion has taken him from the dull routine of the highway to Syria, where as part of his latest adventure in the Middle East's hot spots he shoots photos and video while dodging bullets with zest.

He was in Yemen last year during demonstrations at the US embassy and in Cairo a year earlier, during the heady days that followed the ousting of the longtime president Hosni Mubarak. Later this year, he plans to hook up with the Taliban in Afghanistan.

But for the moment, he is wrapping up a week's tour of the northern Syrian city of Aleppo, which for going on six months has been one of the hottest spots in a conflict that has cost more than 60,000 lives, according to UN figures.

In an interview conducted via Google translate he said:

I'm not a target for snipers because I'm a tourist, not like you journalists. Besides, I'm not afraid if they shoot at me or that they might kill me. I'm a combination of samurai and kamikaze.

The Japanese trucker Toshifumi Fujimoto holds his cameras in front of damaged buses in Aleppo's old city. Photograph: AFP/Getty Images

8.44am GMT

Civil society group

A campaign aimed at promoting civil society in Syria is planning to set up offices in every province despite having to work undercover from the government.

The initiative is aimed at preparing Syrians for life after Assad by promoting democracy and co-existence, Altalli, who is currently based in Gaziantep in Turkey, told the Guardian.

It currently has established bases in Damascus, the suburbs of Damascus, al-Hasaka, Aleppo and Idlib. She said:

Our strategy is within four to five months we will have an active group in each province inside Syria ...

We have two challenges, not only the challenge of being secret in front of the Syrian government, which prohibits any kind of civil activities ... [but also] civil society is a new concept for Syrian people.

The independent and non-sectarian scheme is based on discussion forums and workshops on subjects such as transitional justice, accountability and women’s rights.

Altalli said that despite the challenges of daily life such as the shortage of food, electricity and fresh water, Syrians are still willing to participate in workshops on subjects such as fighting inter-communal violence.

It is “never too early” to discuss such subjects, Altall claimed. She said the work of the centre was particularly pressing now because of human rights abuses conducted by rebels. “You need to explain to them how to treat captives, how to treat children – children should not pick up arms and fight with the Free Syrian Army. These are very important concepts that everyone should know," she said.

There are local examples of civil society organisations forming to provide humanitarian aid, improved schooling and childcare, Altalli said. “This is the main goal of our centre – to co-operate and to partner with other organisations who are working on a local basis. It will be very helpful for the post-Assad era,” she said.

The centre will work with anyone, including members of the current government, but only if they respect human rights and democracy, she said.

With all this killing, torture, and misery inside Syria ... when you hear about all the disasters that are happening you understand that working on civil society is very important in order to keep the society together.

8.44am GMT

Fight for airbase

The fight for control of an airbase in northern Syria is continuing, according to AP, citing conflicting accounts from activists and state media.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said rebels had stormed parts of the Taftanaz airbase in the north-western province of Idlib before withdrawing.

The state-run Sana news agency said government forces protecting the base had "repelled the terrorists' attempt to attack the airport" and inflicted heavy losses.

The Observatory said rebels resumed their assault early on Thursday in an attempt to capture the base, which has resisted several opposition efforts to take the facility in recent months.

The rebels have been pursuing a strategy of attacking airports and military airfields, targeting five airbases in Idlib and the nearby province of Aleppo, trying to chip away at the government's air power, which poses the biggest obstacle to advances by opposition fighters.

The Observatory and the Local Co-ordination Committees, another activist group, reported clashes, air raids and shelling in several suburbs of the capital, Damascus, including Daraya, which the regime has been trying to capture from hundreds of opposition fighters for weeks.

The pro-government al-Watan daily said on Thursday that the army had destroyed rebel strongholds in Daraya and inflicted heavy losses, adding that the area would be declared safe later in the day.

He says this “trial by Twitter” should be resisted until a proper investigation can be conducted. He writes:

What if one of those men is innocent? Or what if somebody is mistaken for one of those men? The number of tragic consequences of such seemingly harmless behaviour are too many to consider. It is no excuse to claim that the situation is so bad that nobody could possibly maintain a semblance of justice in Syria, or that anybody can keep track of all the atrocities. It is also no excuse to say that by distributing such mugshots they did not foresee or hope to see any harm come to the suspects. This act in itself is an incitement to violence that any reasonable person should have foreseen.

But Amin, an avid reader of Middle East Live who is not affiliated with any activist group, says the video should be seen.

He emails:

The video has already been shown on Arab TV channels and has been seen online by millions. The point Maysaloon is making only applies inside Syria. I believe the need to highlight these acts of brutality that Syrians suffer on a daily basis to the outside world greatly outweighs the considerations raised in Maysaloon’s post.

He claimed the attackers in the clip spoke with an unmistakable accent used in the Alawite mountains and they made a number of anti-Sunni insults directed at the alleged victims.

8.44am GMT

Counting the dead

The methodology used in the UN-commissioned study into Syria's mounting death toll has been endorsed by Hamit Dardagan, co-founder of the respected Iraq Body Count.

The UN figure was produced by the independent US-based research organisation Benetech. Their number represents not an estimate based on extrapolation but rather the integration of seven casualty databases, including from the Syrian government and activists. Only the individually named dead, with date and location, were included in the integration in order to prevent duplication.

In an email to the Guardian he said this was the best method available given the circumstances:

This integrative approach is entirely justifiable in my view as it makes no sense to look only at a single documentary source when several exist, especially when these sources themselves are at pains to point out that they are incomplete. Integrating multiple (mostly media) sources is the very foundation of the work produced by Iraq Body Count (IBC), which assumes that no news source or agency provides full coverage – and sure enough, in nearly 10 years even the most comprehensive have never exceeded 60% of the coverage that IBC's integrative approach has allowed.

There are always wrinkles to this kind of work – for instance, the information being brought together needs to be correct in the first instance, and sources should ideally be independent of and not simply quoting each other – but that remains true whatever the origins of the casualty data, be it media, government, or on-the-ground networks. The UN has acted prudently in allowing none of this vital information to languish in various scattered databases and commissioning its integration into what is (unsurprisingly) a greater whole.

Even the most thoughtful political transition will be difficult and fraught with danger and yet the alternative of letting this drag on to a military victory will mean that the Syrian state will have to be built from scratch. Starting with a clean slate may have its attractions given the ingrained corruption fostered by two generations of Ba'athist rule but it is too simplistic a notion when dealing with a complex nation that has undergone the most profound period of strife since its independence.